


Showing Results for 'Katsuki Yuuri'

by Ferrero13



Series: My Husband, Dr. Katsuki-Nikiforov [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Academic Genius Yuuri, Gen, Google search results, Identity Reveal, M/M, Misunderstandings, Nobel Prize
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-26 23:43:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9932435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferrero13/pseuds/Ferrero13
Summary: Victor makes it his goal to get Katsuki Yuuri, figure skater, to the first page of Google results. There is no way he could let such a brilliant skater be overshadowed by Katsuki Yuuri, winner of some stuffy academic medal, who is probably 50 and balding.Or: Yuuri has made a name for himself outside of figure skating, and athletes are slow on the uptake.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate title: Katsuki Yuuri, Nobel Laureate
> 
> I see fics where ‘nobody in academia knows Yuuri is a figure skater when he goes back for post-grad studies post-retirement’, which I have enjoyed immensely. I raise you ‘nobody in figure skating circles (specifically Victor) knows Yuuri is an academic genius’, because there aren't enough fics about academically inclined skaters.

It takes Victor four presses of the ‘next page’ button to finally,  _finally_ , find an article discussing Katsuki Yuuri, figure skater. He’s had to wade through exactly 43 search results of some other Katsuki Yuuri’s apparently prize-winning science that he doesn’t have the English proficiency or scientific literacy to parse, and he is beyond irked that beautiful, captivating, absolutely _stunning_ Katsuki Yuuri, figure skater, has been relegated to the fifth page of Google's search results.

Less than a day later, he has made arrangements to have his belongings shipped to Japan by the end of the month, because he would be damned if he didn’t do everything in his power to elevate Katsuki Yuuri, figure skater, to his rightful place on the first page of Google.

\---

“Oh, Vicchan! Are you looking for Yuuri?”

Victor flashes Yuuri’s mother a blinding smile that is completely effortless. He’s learnt, in the weeks he’s been lodging at Yuuri’s family inn, that everybody in Hasetsu is so achingly genuine. He’d been all too willing too fall in to the same quiet contentment that settles like a warm breeze in Yuuri’s hometown. Smiling has become less of a chore and more of something he does because he is currently nothing short of happiness personified.

“Have you seen him? I wanted to go through his short programme with him today.”

“He’s up in his room. Matsudaira-sensei scheduled a video call today.”

“Matsudaira-sensei?” Victor repeats, the name heavy and awkward on his tongue. A previous ballet instructor, maybe? Or a doctor? Is Yuuri sick?

“He’s a professor at Toudai. He worked with Yuuri on his research in Detroit.”

Victor blinks. “Is Yuuri still studying? Didn’t he graduate?”

Hiroko gives him one of her close-eyed smiles that makes Victor see Yuuri overlayed for a moment. “No, no. Matsudaira-sensei just has some questions for Yuuri. You know how it is—when you get to a certain level, nothing ends anymore and everything is just a work in progress.”

Victor doesn’t know how it is, doesn’t know why a professor would be video calling a student who has already graduated and moved on to bigger things in life (such as being coached by Victor), but he doesn’t ask because he’s never even been to university, so what does he know about it? He knows all about how programmes are never really  _finished_ , just presented, but academia is beyond him.

“You can go up to remind him that lunch is ready. He should be wrapping up by now,” Hiroko offers when she sees him still rooted in the middle of the doorway.

So Victor goes. He steps as lightly as possible because this inn is old and wood is not the sturdiest material for building a floor that’s always half-steamed from the hot springs outside, and comes to a stop outside Yuuri’s room. He would bet his medals that Yuuri is talking in English, but he cannot for the life of him understand any of the words that make it through Yuuri’s door and into his ears.

“Replication,” Yuuri says, followed by a bit of mumbling. “Air-pea-topes,” he says next, and then, “rye-bow-zines.” Victor thinks that Yuuri may have invented a new language consisting of nothing but a baffling collection of nouns.

Victor is smart, but he doesn’t have a mind suited for academic pursuits. He can calculate his scores as he skates and switch up elements without batting an eyelash, but there is a reason why he went into figure skating and not academia, after all. And, as he thinks back to those four-and-a-half pages of Katsuki Yuuri, scientific sensation, he finds that it wouldn’t be a hardship for him to break up Yuuri’s surely dreadfully boring conversation with Matsudaira-sensei. Katsuki Yuuri, figure skater, must not be drowned by stuffy academics.

So he bursts into Yuuri’s room with yet another genuinely happy smile and says, “Yuuri! Your mother made you an absolutely delicious dish of lightly seared broccoli! When are you coming down for lunch?”

Yuuri doesn’t screech, but it’s a near thing. He quickly apologises to Matsudaira-sensei—and what appears to be enough tiles of other people to fill a post-competition press conference hall—before powering down his laptop screen and joining Victor with a nervous smile.

“Broccoli again?” he asks, looking dejected.

“Yes,” Victor grins. “But if you do well, I’ll let you have some of my katsudon at dinner.”

\---

Katsuki Yuuri rises to the fourth page of Google’s search results after Onsen on Ice.

Victor, pleased, goes to bed with a smile.

\---

It isn’t long after that when a small contingent of people who are badly dressed in a way that is less ‘rural town chic’ and more ‘moths live in my closets so what’s the point of nice clothes’ shows up at Yu-topia Katsuki.

Victor watches curiously as Yuuri immediately breaks away from the dinner table to greet them, looking more assured than Victor has ever seen him off ice.

“Who are they?” Victor asks Mari.

“Hmm?” Mari plucks at what little meat remains on the fish. “Just ignore them. They’ll leave in an hour or two once they’ve had their fill picking Yuuri’s brain apart.”

Victor must look horrified because Mari laughs when she catches his expression.

“The mad scientists are in the physics department. These are as tame as housecats.”

“That’s not reassuring, coming from somebody who thinks Yurio is adorable and worthy of being bundled up in ten layers of blankets.”

Mari shrugs. “It’s not like Yuuri would be more useful to them dead than alive.”

“Why are they even looking for Yuuri?”

“I don’t understand it myself. It has something to do with whatever Yuuri was getting up to in Detroit. He tried to explain to me once but I switched off because it's too much effort to keep up with him when he really gets going, you know?”

 _This_  Victor knows. It was just last week when Yuuri had demanded to learn all of the quads that Victor could do—he will never forget the moment when realisation dawned that he  _was_  getting old.

“How often are they here?”

“Not as often as you think. Yuuri mostly limits their interactions to video calls. See that one over there with a full head of white hair? That’s Matsudaira-sensei. He coordinates these things and he’s a complete pushover. Yuuri could ask him to give up his tenure and he would do it in a heartbeat.”

“…wow.” Victor knows that Yuuri can be persuasive when he gets in the right frame of mind (not everybody could convince Yura to breakdance at a banquet, for one), but he didn’t quite realise that it extended to old men who look like they can cut Victor in half without even trying.

He needs to pry Yuuri away from these academics before he falls back to the fifth page of Google.

\---

Phichit Chulanont is a confusing human being who shines brighter than the sea at noon. That is to say, his smile is quite literally blinding because it is often accompanied by a camera flash that nobody except Yuuri ever seems prepared for.

“Yuuri! Is Matsudaira still bothering you?” Phichit says at the hot pot restaurant about five minutes before Victor descends into black-out drunkenness.

“It’s not a bother if I look forward to hearing his progress too. Skating has kept me away all this time, and there’s nobody more up-to-date than him.”

“You sure he’s not just coming over so he can steal your medal?”

Distantly, Victor wonders why ‘medal’, singular, and also why a professor from Tokyo University would want any of Yuuri’s figure skating medals.

“He has his own already, Phichit,” Yuuri says, softly chiding, but smiling nonetheless.

Victor takes another shot and slumps further against Yuuri, who wraps a warm, steady arm around him. Matsudaira should stop coming up in conversation so much. At this rate, Victor is beginning to suspect that Yuuri has plans to leave him, a living legend with more gold medals than he knows what to do with, for Matsudaira, boring academic with only one medal that was probably just a consolation prize for participating. Wrapping his arms around Yuuri, he tells himself that he cannot let that happen.

Yuuri belongs to figure skating. Academia already has their own Katsuki Yuuri, science superstar. They can let figure skating have this one.

\---

The Cup of China passes by in a blur of high-strung emotions, first kisses, and desperate post-competition hugs. Victor is the happiest he’s ever been until he types ‘Katsuki Yuuri’ into Google and has to suppress an agonised yell of righteous fury when Katsuki Yuuri, figure skater, has only been promoted to the third page despite an impassioned performance and the scandal of being kissed by one’s coach live on international broadcast.

The only thing stopping him from throwing his phone across the room is Yuuri sleeping peacefully next to him. That, and the thought of losing all of his photos of Makkachin and Yuuri if his phone shatters into two.

\---

Victor has learned enough Japanese to field calls when Toshiya decides that the plumbing needs to be fixed before the inn is flooded. It is a breezy autumn afternoon when the phone rings and Victor answers with, “お電話ありがとうございます。ユートピアかつきでございます。”

“勝生先生はいらっしゃいますか。”

Victor stares at the phone. Why would anybody come calling for a Katsuki-sensei? None of the Katsuki’s in this household were doctors or teachers.

He ends up stalling for time because he has no idea if he’s misheard ‘senshu’ for ‘sensei’, or if ‘sensei’ could also refer to somebody who owns hot springs.

Toshiya comes back just as Victor is about to run out of stories about Makkachin to tell whoever it is on the phone and Victor passes it to him with a relieved sigh. “She’s looking for a ‘Katsuki-sensei’?” Victor tells him with a slight questioning lilt.

“Ah,” Toshiya says, as if this happens every day. “You can go join Yuuri at the rink now. I’ll deal with this.”

Victor leaves Yu-topia Katsuki feeling like he’s missing out on something very important.

\---

The Rostelecom Cup had been going so well until they received the call that Makkachin had stolen the steam buns that Victor had explicitly told her not to steal. So much for being a good dog.

He spends the time between the end of Yuuri’s free skate and Yuuri’s arrival in Fukuoka wandering around the inn aimlessly, unable to sleep but also unwilling to muster up the energy for anything more than listless walking. Makkachin follows at his feet, whining like she knows that she should be very sorry for making Victor leave Yuuri at such an important point in the season.

There is a cabinet in the lounge that Victor rarely finds time to admire beyond noting that Yuuri’s own medal collection is not insignificant either. He recognises most of the international ones, but his eyes glaze over when he gets to the medals and trophies from local competitions. His written Japanese is mediocre at best and absolutely horrid at worst, so he’s never had the patience to try deciphering any of them.

But he has all the time in the world now, and he misses Yuuri so much that it feels like he has to drag his heart with every step he takes. Maybe knowing a bit more about Yuuri’s skating history would dull the ache.

So he reads, pulling out his phone to painstakingly look up unknown kanji by their radicals. There is a series of plastic medals from yearly competitions at Ice Castle, consisting of one bronze, two silvers, and five golds. Those sit at the bottom of the cabinet, along with a set of trophies for each year that Yuuri has won consecutive golds.

On the next shelf up rests a colourful array of medals from Yuuri’s junior years. There are a lot. The ones from regionals form an arc around the main attraction—a pair of Junior Grand Prix Final medals, a bronze and a gold. Yuuri never told him about them, but he supposes that it  _is_  on the JSF’s website after all (Victor couldn’t find his Wikipedia page, which is ridiculous because Yuuri is so decorated that he deserves one, so he’s drafting up plans) and there was no reason for Yuuri to bring it up when Victor’s trying to focus on the upcoming GPF. Victor just wishes that Yuuri would acknowledge his achievements a little more. Not every skater makes it to both the JGPF and the GPF. It might even be arguably more difficult to win the JGPF given how many skaters drop out before ever making their senior debuts.

The topmost shelf is slightly sparser, but what it lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality—medals from qualifying regionals, nationals, 4CCs, and assorted GP series competitions after Yuuri’s senior debut. It’s very…golden. From the spread of nationals medals, Victor assumes that Yuuri doesn’t have very many rivals in Japan, much less in the regionals. His GP series medals are neatly arranged around…Victor frowns. He doesn’t recognise this one.

It’s clearly not in Japanese, and no skating competition could ever have been tasteless enough to cast an image of a bearded man on the front of its medals. And why are there roman numerals…?

“Can’t sleep?”

Victor startles. Makkachin presses closer to his leg before barking softly and trotting over to Hiroko, who gives her a scratch under her ear.

The smile he gives her is a little fragile, a little lost, but that’s okay because it won’t be once Yuuri’s back home with him. “He’s spoiled me for sleeping alone.”

Hiroko sighs wistfully. “That boy spoils everyone he comes into contact with. He has professors three times his age wrapped around his finger and he doesn’t even know it.”

“Why is that, anyway?”

“See that medal there in the middle?” Hiroko says, pointing at the oddly out-of-place one that Victor was staring at before. “That’s why. We had reporters camping outside for a week when it happened.”

“Wha—,” Victor begins to ask, but is cut off by a shrill ringing.

His alarm.

He grabs the coat he’s laid over a table and hurries out after throwing a quick apology to Hiroko for cutting their conversation short. There’s nothing more important to him right now than getting to Yuuri.

\---

Katsuki Yuuri, figure skater, is on the second page of Google that night after figure skating news blows up over his overnight change of coach and how he barely scraped past Michele Crispino to qualify for the GPF.

Victor glares at the first page of search results. Katsuki Yuuri, academic bigshot, is  _going down_  after the GPF. Victor will make sure of it.

\---

At the GPF, right after the medal ceremony and just as Victor is about to steer Yuuri away from the rink, somebody somewhere screams, “Katsuki-sensei!” and Yuuri responds.

Yuuri, with his silver medal clutched in one hand, tilts his head up and Victor is temporarily lost in the long lines of his neck.

“Katsuki-sensei!” the voice shouts again, louder this time, and more excited.

Victor barely has time to react before a girl—really, she couldn’t be more than 20—barrels past five rows of spectators to reach for Yuuri. “Katsuki-sensei,” she says reverently, leaning over the divider, and Victor completely agrees with her breathlessness because even he still stops breathing sometimes when he looks at Yuuri, and unlike her he’s had months to get used to the sight.

“Hello,” Yuuri says, and, to Victor’s surprise, he isn’t flushing.

“I’m such a huge fan of your work and I’m so glad I let my brother drag me here today instead of going to the lab! I didn’t know you skated. You were beautiful! I can’t believe nobody ever mentioned this before! Matsudaira-sensei is your biggest fan and he’s never brought this up,” the girl continues. “Would you sign my pass? I don’t have anything else on me right now.”

Yuuri receives the pass with both hands. “Your name is…?”

“Miyahara Fumiko. I’m a third year at Toudai developing protein microarrays using your system and on an exchange programme here.”

“How is it coming along? I heard from Matsudaira-sensei that his student has reached something of a breakthrough. Is that you?”

Victor didn’t realise that a person could become so red without draining blood supply from every other part of their body. He also didn’t realise that it was possible for Yuuri to become so lost in conversation with a fan that he failed to notice the small gathering of curious skaters around him.

“Yes! I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue research in this field but your paper was absolutely amazing! I’m sorry if I’m just repeating myself, but your system was so simple and so elegant it’s so  _beautiful_. You are a gift to this field, Katsuki-sensei.”

“I’m not so sure about being a ‘gift’, but I really appreciate your support, Miyahara-san. I look forward to reading your paper soon.”

“I won’t disappoint you!”

Yuuri gives her a short wave before tugging Victor with him toward the conference room.

“Were you a teacher?”

Yuuri looks at Victor like he’s grown an extra head and started singing Leroy’s theme backward. “No. What makes you think that?”

“She called you ‘sensei’.”

“That’s not…well, I did tell them not to call me that but it stuck around, I guess?” Yuuri says, face a pleasant shade of post-competition flush and embarrassment.

“Yuuri, he still doesn’t know?” Phichit laughs gleefully behind them.

“Know what?” Victor asks.

Phichit slings an arm around Yuuri. “Our Yuuri here is  _famous_  in scientific circles. He’s actually a bit of a god.”

“Phichit!” Yuuri swats him. To Victor, he says, “I’m really not. I worked with many other people so it wasn’t entirely my effort.”

“Yuuri, you have one of the 175 medals ever awarded. You should be proud of yourself!”

“I did wonder where I’ve seen your name before, Yuuri,” Chris suddenly interrupts. “You were headline news for nearly a week straight. I didn’t realise you were so smart!’

“What does  _that_  mean?” Phichit huffs. “Yuuri is obviously very smart. You don’t get awarded a PhD by 23 if you aren’t. Right, Yuuri?”

“You have a PhD?” Victor says, incredulous, with just the slightest hint of glee. “Why didn’t you ever tell me, Doctor Yuuri?”

Yuuri buries his face in his hands. “ _That’s_  why. You’re ridiculous enough as it is—I don’t need to give you reason to be worse.”

“But Yuuri, a PhD! You have a doctorate! All this time I’ve been coaching a Doctor and I didn’t even know! You’re so amazing!”

“It’s better than that,” Chis says, but gets pulled away by his husband before Victor can ask him to continue.

Yuuri only manages to pry his hands away from his face when they get to the conference room, and even then he refuses to look at Victor until he catches Yuuri’s hand and presses a soft kiss to his hair.

\---

“Katsuki, congratulations on silver. Would you say that this was worth taking time off from academia, especially since you’ve only just published your ground-breaking paper?”

Academia again. Victor pushes his hair back with a sharp exhale. Why does it follow Yuuri around everywhere? Just because he has a PhD (which, okay, Victor will admit is kind of a big deal, especially for somebody Yuuri’s age) doesn’t mean that they should be detracting from Yuuri’s fantastic skating. Isn’t science happy enough with its own Katsuki Yuuri, research rock star?

“Ah, well. I’m still in touch with researchers at various universities so it’s not like I’ve completely left. But I don’t regret returning to skating, because I’ve found something—someone—I never knew I needed. With time, maybe I’ll go back to research, but for now I want to focus on skating and holding on to the precious things this season has given me.”

“How does it feel to make headlines for a second time in a year?”

“Surreal,” Yuuri says, and is met by a chorus of chuckles. “I didn’t think that this would happen, especially after what happened last season. I’m really grateful to Victor for the opportunity to be here today.”

Victor leans back against the wall, thankful to have been important enough that Yuuri brought him up multiple times. Maybe, with this, Katsuki Yuuri, figure skater, will finally rise to the top of Google.

\---

He’s too busy celebrating, training, and packing after the GPF to Google anything aside from flights from Fukuoka to St. Petersburg. Between being kissed to within an inch of his life and figuring out if he should leave all of his lamps in Hasetsu, he decides that Google can wait.

\---

“Yuuri. What’s this?”

Yuuri pauses in the middle of unpacking a box full of hoodies and looks over his shoulder to see Victor picking a gold medal out of a heavily padded box.

“It’s a medal, Vitya. You have dozens of them—you of all people should know what it is.”

“Now you’re just being mean,” Victor says, sighing dramatically as he scoots his way across the room to Yuuri. He flings his arms around Yuuri’s shoulders as soon as he is in reach, tugging until Yuuri tips over and falls back onto Victor’s chest. “What competition is this from? I don’t recognise it.” It's the one Hiroko pointed out when he couldn't sleep—the one that made reporters camp outside Yu-topia Katsuki for a week.

Yuuri laughs, plucking the medal from Victor’s hand. “God forbid the great Victor Nikiforov fail to recognise a medal.” He taps Victor’s nose with it. “That said, I would definitely be surprised if you don’t recognise this name.”

“Alfr Nobel?” Victor reads slowly.

“Yes. It’s not a prize for skating.”

“Nobel? A prize?”

Yuuri looks at him expectantly, as if waiting for him to come to some earth-shattering realisation.

“What is a Nobel Pri— _no_.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Yuuri says, face pink but smile wide. Victor forgets for a moment that he’s in the middle of discovering something incredible about Yuuri to admire how his fiancée is now willing to accept praise and acknowledgement and look radiant while he’s at it.

“I’ve been coaching a  _Nobel laureate_?”

“I’d rather you think of it as coaching a skater whom you happen to be engaged to and who has won silver at the GPF with the power of love, but sure, let’s go with that. You were coaching a Nobel laureate.”

\---

An hour later, after smothering Yuuri in kisses and completely empty threats to withhold Makkachin if Yuuri ever keeps anything this significant from him again, Victor hugs Yuuri close as they watch the sun dip below the horizon through massive floor-to-ceiling windows.

“You should’ve checked my Wikipedia page,” Yuuri hums, head on Victor’s shoulder.

Victor strokes the curve of Yuuri’s shoulder. “You don’t have a Wikipedia page, Yuuri.”

“I do,” Yuuri says.

“No, you don’t. I’ve been looking for it for a year.”

“It’s on the first page of Google. The first result, even. I asked Phichit to take it down but he only added more to it.”

“Yuuri, I had to get to page 5 to find anything about figure skating. What are you talking about?”

Yuuri stifles a laugh, and plucks his phone from the floor. “Here, let me show you.”

\---

Victor realises that Katsuki Yuuri, figure skater, has been on the first page of Google’s search results all along. He just needed to also realise that Katsuki Yuuri, stuffy academic, and Katsuki Yuuri, figure skater, are the same person.

Well, it doesn't really matter either way, because an article discussing Katsuki Yuuri, figure skater and Victor's fiancée, has finally made its way to the first page.

**Author's Note:**

> I figured that if Yuuri's paper was about replicating proteins, which is currently unfeasible but would almost definitely revolutionise biochemistry if found to be possible, they wouldn't wait 20 years to make him a laureate. Hover over for definitions of the words Victor absolutely butchered, if any of you are vaguely interested in biology.
> 
> お電話ありがとうございます。ユートピアかつきでございます。: Thank you for calling. This is Yu-topia Katsuki. (Using really humble language.)
> 
> 勝生先生はいらっしゃいますか。: Is Katsuki-sensei here? (Using really polite language.)
> 
> Sorry I got side-tracked and wrote this instead of Dear Mama's epilogue. :/ I couldn't shake this story off and actually took time from studying to write this because you just have to when you're called. You can probably expect Dear Mama's epilogue about a week from now, if I haven't drowned in exams and reports by then.


End file.
